23 Facts About Morris Ginsberg

Morris Ginsberg was a British sociologist, who played a key role in the development of the discipline.

Morris Ginsberg served as editor of The Sociological Review in the 1930s and later became the founding chairman of the British Sociological Association in 1951 and its first President.

Morris Ginsberg was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1942 to 1943, and helped draft the UNESCO 1950 statement titled The Race Question.

Morris Ginsberg was born in Kelme, a small town in the Kovno Governorate in Lithuania.

Morris Ginsberg was given an education considered good according to the standards adopted by a small, isolated and intensely religious Jewish community.

Morris Ginsberg's father had previously emigrated to Liverpool, England and established a tobacco factory, and at the age of 15 he rejoined him together with his mother and sisters.

Morris Ginsberg made up his mind to study, but at the time he was ignorant of any European language except Yiddish and, although he knew a great deal about religious matters and Hebrew lore, he knew nothing whatever of even the rudiments of secular education.

Morris Ginsberg worked in his father's business and could only study in his spare time.

Morris Ginsberg succeeded in preparing for the Matriculation Examination of the University of London which he passed in January 1907.

Morris Ginsberg won the John Stuart Mill studentship three times in succession.

Morris Ginsberg's thesis consisted of a dissertation on the philosophy of Malebranche and was accompanied by a translation of his Discourses on Metaphysics.

Morris Ginsberg published The Psychology of Society in 1921 and by 1964 it had reached its ninth edition and had been translated into many languages ranging from Spanish to Japanese.

Morris Ginsberg's Sociology, written in 1934, was described by The Guardian in their obituary as "probably the best introduction to the subject ever written".

In 1931, Morris Ginsberg married Ethel Street ; the couple had no children.

Morris Ginsberg was president of the Ethical Union from 1954 to 1957.

Morris Ginsberg criticised the traditional view, widely propagated from Aristotle through Hume to Bertrand Russell, that the main functions of reason in human affairs lie in the clarification, systematisation and control of impulse and feeling, and the discovery of means to their fulfilment.

Morris Ginsberg contended that reason and feeling should not be held to be in opposition, or reason as the slave of the passions, but that reason could play a significant role in motivating action and directing feeling and conation.

Morris Ginsberg was continually preoccupied with examining the role of reason in ethics.

Morris Ginsberg charted and analysed the diversity of morals among societies, and between groups and individuals, but made a clear distinction between that recognition and assumption that ethics must be entirely relative.

Morris Ginsberg manifested an 'objectivist' theory of ethics in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Sidgwick and Hobhouse.

Morris Ginsberg saw clearly that there is no finality in these matters, and that conditions, circumstances and societies change, involving advances and regressions.

Morris Ginsberg was inevitably concerned with the nature of Justice and its relationship to equality, and the associated question of Law as an increasingly important agent of social change and reform.

Morris Ginsberg was for sanity, coolness, reflection and restraint in judgement.